I would give them a task and ask them to explore how to do it with Claude Code. Let them explore and learn.

I would start with internal tools, something you want to build fast, but you don't need to deploy or make it public-facing. This will give them time to learn how to collaborate by making AGENTS.md, skills, and MCPs (if required).

How do you introduce any tool/change to a team of people?

You get buy in, start having conversations see what AI people have explored. Have they tried claude? Do they prefer other tools? If so why? What are the objections. Actually listen. I’d also showcase what you can do. I love to present what codex has found when debugging something, or a prototype I’ve put together.

If you have the budget pay for subscriptions so they can play around.

Also, you say that development velocity is a big problem, but I would dive into why that is. You may be disappointed when velocity remains the same with AI tools.

This is something I can help with - happy to do a free session to talk through onboarding strategies for your team. Feel free to reach out, contact info is in my profile.

Give them a challenge, and then you'll participate in it yourself to prove yourself.

I shared the one week trial links with my team and everyone is picking it up and getting productive. We share tips and tricks, best practices in a slack channel.